Black Tax: Obligation, Love, or Something in Between?
“I don’t want to disturb you, but…”
If you are African and living abroad, you know this WhatsApp message. You know the pause before you open it. You know the small calculation happening in your head before you even read the rest.
Like many Africans in the diaspora, I have one line in my budget that never disappears. Rent. Groceries. Transport. And then family back home.
Last year alone, Africans abroad sent over $104 billion back to the continent, roughly twice the level of overseas development assistance. Our governments should frame us and put us in the State House.
We call it Black Tax.
But I have noticed we don’t all mean the same thing when we say it.
For some, it is a sacred duty. Your parents sold land to fund your studies. Your aunt raised you when times were hard. Sending money home is not a tax, it is a thank you with interest. To frame it otherwise feels like betrayal.
For others, it is quietly crushing. The guilt of buying yourself something nice. The retirement account that never gets funded because someone’s school fees are always due. The silent resentment that builds when “family” starts to feel like “clients.”
And for many of us, it is both at the same time. Pride and pressure. Love and exhaustion.
Where do I land personally? I think we have been sold a lie that sending money home is enough. It is not. My mother doesn’t need another airtime top-up. She needs an investment that compounds. My brother doesn’t need fare money every month. He needs a skill, a business, a system that pays him back.
I grew up hearing “I have no money” so often that I never learned how to save or invest. And now I am watching myself almost repeat the cycle, just in euros.
So a few things I have been sitting with. Is it really Black Tax, or is it the absence of social safety nets that wealthier countries take for granted? If our governments pensioned our parents, would we call this something different? Why do we whisper about it at dinner parties but rarely plan for it in our budgets? Financial advisors abroad build plans around mortgages and retirement. Not around siblings, cousins, and village obligations. And what happens to the next generation? Our children, born here, may not feel the same pull. Is that progress, loss, or both?
I don’t have all the answers. But I have stopped sending money blindly. I now ask: Is this feeding a need, or building something? That single question changed how I show up for my family.
If you are in the diaspora, how do you navigate it? If you have found a version that feels sustainable, what did it take to get there?